Day 2836 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 5:8 NIV

This past week we've been discussing the more difficult side of the story of Christ and how, albeit really tough to look at and think about, we need to take all of it in in order to grasp the fullness of the message and truly understand the gravity of the gift that we've been given. If we don't witness the suffering then we can never equate our sins with misery. If we don't behold Christ's death then we may miss fully understanding why He died. If we look away when it’s hard to watch, then we’ll not be able to testify that we know what He did.

If we don't see what should have been done to us then we can't fathom the kind of love that would take our place and endure it all for us.

But in light of all these posts about the crucifixion throughout the past week, there's been one single question, a single word in fact that has plagued me: Why? Why would He do it? Why would He willingly go through that? Why would He do it for me? Why am I worth suffering for? Why am I worth dying for? Why should He who is and was and will always be innocent lay down His life for a scumbag such I seeing as how I’m as far from innocent as possible?

Maybe it's a symptom of living in a lost and broken world that still judges imperfections. Perhaps it's a mindset fashioned from a sense of doubt and fear and a sprinkle of idiocy. Maybe it's just that I've not managed to remember some things. But, as I'm sure I've discussed in prior posts, I often struggle to see anything decent in myself. I often struggle to find any redeeming qualities in which to find hope for my life. I tend to only be able to see the things which need work in the form of fixing, changing, healing, saving.

I guess it's another simple matter of perspective in which I could possibly focus on the good and ignore the bad, but somehow, even if that were the case, I feel that I would still manage to run headlong the opposite direction. No matter how much concession I afford myself, how much latitude I offer, how much freedom for foolishness I give, I still struggle to find much if anything within myself to consider even close to decent.

In fact, I find I tend to have much in common with Paul and feel a significant relation to his writings and perspectives. In Romans 7:18 he sums up my typical outlook of myself in saying, "For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out." I want to do good, but my life is a lengthy testimony of how I cannot. I wish there was something to boast about, but all I carry are the scars caused by poor choices.

I wish I could see what He sees, but instead I largely only see the mistakes I make. I only notice the poor choices I’ve chosen. I only take stock of the failures that have all but defined my life up until this point. I only remember the things which I still seek forgiveness for having done. I only count the failures I find in my weaknesses. I only keep score of the times I fall short, and friends, I'm losing bad!

My point is that while I may go a little overboard in this area, I still realize that, in truth, I've lived a life that is everything God never wanted it to be. I look back and see so many times that I could have made a decent decision only to have picked the worst choice possible. I am legitimately incapable of counting my errors as I don't have that much time and there's other things I need to do with the time I have left. There’s simply not enough of my life left to sit around recalling every single stupid thing I've done.

So all of this and all we've discussed recently brings me back to that question. Why? Why me when there seems to be nothing good in me? Why die for a wretched scoundrel who basically has little to offer? Why endure a kind of misery our minds can't comprehend for the person who earned it yet remains largely unwilling to admit it let alone change their lives to reflect the shame found in their shortcomings? Why offer forgiveness to someone who scoffs at the idea of needing it? Why love someone who has lived a life testifying to their hatred of all things righteous? Why reach down from Heaven to save those who don't want to be saved?

Well, in all my thinking over the past week, wrestling with the question as to why God would send Christ, why He would die for me, and why I'm worth any of it, I've only found one answer, and oddly enough it's also just a single word: Love.

It's because of a love we don't understand. It's because of a love bigger than our hatred and foolishness. It's because of a love that is even more unrelenting than our desire to be complacent in our sins. It's because of a distant design from the past in which God created us in His image, created us to do good things, created us to be His, and a simple and yet undeniable fact in that He's unwilling to give up even though we've done so countless times since.

You see, we look at the cross and we struggle to get it. It's hard to look at and even harder to understand. We hear that it's a message of love given to those who are undeserving, and sadly, we still sometimes manage to convince ourselves that it's not meant for us. We witness this miraculous redemption and rather than humbly accepting our great need for it, we veer off in search of reasons why we can't accept it. Our human nature just can't fully fathom the love we've been shown, and so we're left not knowing what to do.

I think many times, at least in my personal experience, we look at the cross and think of Christ and reject Him because we know we're unworthy. We read the Gospels as if they're an old story in which we simply don't belong. We recount the miracles told throughout Scripture and fail to see how we ourselves could be on the receiving end of a miraculous love that disregards our failures and flaws and dies for those who are dead in sin.

We just take the path of Peter. We see Christ do something indescribable and rather than accepting it with open arms, we beg Him to go away because we know we're not deserving to be found in His presence. We're so used to our insignificance defined by our faults and failures that we simply can't see beyond the misery that we know we've fully earned. We cling to our death because we've proven countless times that we can't do anything of value with life.

Friends, as natural as it is, and trust me, I know it's natural, we have to learn to look beyond our wrecked perception of ourselves. We've lived these lives that are filled with more to be ashamed of than to take pride in. We've lived the mistakes and still carry the scars they've left behind. We've done all the wrong things and often remember more of them than anything else. But we can't remain so focused on our undeserving nature that we fail to take hold of the gift we've been offered despite it.

We can't keep Christ at a distance just because we're afraid that our stupidity may be contagious. We can't approach faith as if we're unable to be taken into the fold of those arms that we ourselves stretched out and hammered onto the cross. We can't pray with this attitude of being unworthy of God's time. We can't study Scripture as if it was simply written for those who deserve it. NOBODY DESERVES IT!!

The thing I think we all need to keep in mind is that we'll never fully get it on this side of forever. We'll never understand all the answers to all the questions of all the things we can't understand while on this earth. We'll never be able to master this faith in these lives. So we need to stop trying to figure it out and find the answers and just simply accept that some things don't need to be understood. Maybe they just need to be accepted. Maybe they just need our humble trust. Maybe they just need us to let go so that He can finally catch us.

I've spent a lot of time trying to understand why Christ would die for me when I can recount a million reasons as to why He shouldn't. And in doing so, I've found plenty of reasons to doubt because of my awareness of my faults. So maybe instead of trying to understand why He would do it, perhaps we should spend our time being thankful for the fact that He did and let that be good enough.

The bottom line is that we will likely never feel worthy of this love we've been shown, and that's simply because we're not worthy of this love we've been shown. But we can't let that become our focus as it will also become our stumbling block. We’ve been conditioned to only see our failures and flaws. But the more time we waste worrying about how unworthy we are of Christ’s love, the less time we have to thank Him for loving us anyway.

Look, even if and when we can't see it, He saw something in us that He was willing to die to give us a chance to see for ourselves. Let that be the focus. Let His mercy be the prize instead of answers to questions that can’t bring us peace. Let His love simply be the overriding grace that it is, without trying to build some kind of restriction or requirement into it that He didn’t ask us to add.

At the end of the day, what we see and how we feel and what we think carries little if any value. He looked down from Heaven and decided to come down here and give His life that we may find ours. Rather than wasting another moment asking Him to hang on or go away until we figure out why, let's devote the rest of our lives to discovering the answer through our faithfulness in following and serving Him along the path that He paved with His death. Let’s spend the rest of the time we have living out the answer by letting Him lead us to what He always saw we could always be.

Our lives and what we end up doing with them from here will be the answer to that question of why He would die for us. Don't waste any time trying to figure it out along the way!

#LeaveNoSoulUntold